Winter 2009 Undergraduate Course Descriptions
LTAF 110 - AFRICAN ORAL LITERATURE
Text, Context and Performance
Instructor: Robert Cancel
There are many dimensions to the creation and communication of oral literature. Our course begins by examining some theories and methods applied to oral art forms over the last century, including the disciplines of psychoanalysis, ethnography, folklore, literature, visual arts, classics, and performance studies. We will move between specific societies and more general views of these art forms. In particular, we will employ videotapes of storytelling performances and apply what we learn to texts of narratives that the class will share. Each student will choose a particular collection of narratives from an African society and analyze them throughout the term. Our goal, then, is not so much to come to absolute conclusions as it is to recognize the depth and variety of narrative performance arts and the ways to understand them. The class combines lectures and discussion. It is very important that students keep up with the readings and bring their own observations to each class meeting. Two essays and a final exam are required. The essays will be around seven pages long, respectively, and the final exam will be written in class.
Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTAM 111 - COMPARATIVE CARIBBEAN DISCOURSE
Instructor: Sara Johnson
This course has been cancelled for Winter 2009
LTAM 140 - TOPICS IN CULTURE AND POLITICS
Brazilian Literature and Culture
Instructor: Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
This course provides an introduction to Brazilian culture through readings of essays, poetry, fiction, music and films that consider the meaning of "being Brazilian" (brasilidade). Our focus will be on texts that construct Brazil as a mixed-race (mestiço) nation. As the two largest post-slavery countries in the Americas, Brazil and the U.S. have long been engaged in comparative evaluations of one another. For this reason, we will also look at U.S. interpretations of Brazil as a Racial Democracy, as an "exotic" relic of the plantation era--replete with carnival, soccer, and enticing women of color advertising the nation's beaches--or, alternatively, as a "tropical hell" characterized by unending violence, an image that reproduces nineteenth-century ideas about race and criminality. The course will be particularly concerned with how blackness and poverty are interpreted, and how those interpretations come to be accepted as fact. Who is observing and assessing racial and class "others"? How does ethnography produce an unequal power relation between the "subject" who observes, analyzes, and writes, and the "object" that is observed, analyzed, and written up as text? Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTCH 101 - READINGS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE LITERATURE
Eileen Chang’s Writings and Films
Instructor: Yingjin Zhang
This class is a survey of Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), perhaps the most famous female Chinese writer in the 20th century. We will explore her writings in relation to the rise of Shanghai culture, dilemmas of tradition and modernity, the puzzle of rewriting, the cross-fertilization of literature and visual arts, and the making of a literary star. We will also analyze several films based on her scripts or adapted from her works in order to evaluate popular and critical responses to her imaginative writing and her legendary life. Class requirements include readings and viewings, a class presentation, four short commentaries, one term paper, and a final exam.
Advanced (i.e., near native) reading skills in Chinese (way beyond the fourth-year level) are required. Students can choose to do presentations and write papers in either Chinese or English.
Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
No Course Offerings Winter 2009
LTCS 52 - TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Gender and Labor in Literature and Film
Proposed Instructor: Kyla Schuller
In this course, students will be introduced to theories and methods of feminist cultural studies and gain experience analyzing cultural texts. We will focus on questions of gender and labor in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature and film, analyzing films and novels alongside scholarly articles that have shaped the field of feminist cultural studies.
Key topics of analysis will include how gender intersects with race, class, and sexuality, as well as consumer culture, technology, the division of labor within the home, the idealized split between the public and private spheres, politics, and neocolonialism and globalization. In short, many of the questions guiding this course are central to the field of U.S. cultural studies in general. Our specific focus on gender and labor will allow us to examine how culture has been not merely reflective but also productive of key shifts in twentieth-century culture such as the changing notions of masculinity and femininity. For example, we will trace the shifting cultural and political context from the 1940s, which punished women who have entrepreneurial desires in films like Mildred Pierce, to the contemporary phenomenon that equates allegedly feminine characteristics like the skilled application of make-up and consumption of luxury goods with women’s professional success in films like Legally Blonde. We will also pay particular attention to how the dynamics of class and race effect one’s experience of labor and how literature and film has been used to both contest and reinforce these hierarchies. Other texts we will examine may include: Rebel Without a Cause, Silkwood, Stone Butch Blues, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Babel,and Heroes and Saints.
*This course will also count as a LTEN course.
LTCS 150 - TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Bob Dylan
Instructor: William O’Brien
Introducing Bob Dylan: poet, performer, song writer, recording artist, folk hero, rock star, legend, actor, recluse, born-again Christian, Bob Dylan Inc., bobdylan.com, cowboy, sell-out, actor, enigma. This is a course for students new to Dylan, or already familiar with him.
The production and practice of American pop (or ‘folk’ and ‘rock’) music changed forever with the invention of Bob Dylan in the 1960s. Still perfoming today, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Dylan has extended musical traditions, confounded audiences, and transformed himself countless times—always in ways that defy easy understanding.
Concentrating especially on his easily available recorded music, we will investigate the phenomenon called Bob Dylan. We will attend very carefully to the early work that made him famous. We will listen to music from the earliest home recordings through his most recent work. We will watch Dylan on screen from the avant-garde film Don’t Look Back (1965), through his acting stints in various movies, the weird commercial for Victoria’s Secret (2007), to whatever we find on YouTube. Throughout all of this, we will always attend to the aesthetic, political, and social complexities of Dylan—as artist and cultural phenomenon.
Most all our media will be available through the SSH Library and online. It shouldn’t be absolutely necessary to buy any recordings or books for the course, though it will certainly make life easier for you if you do. (Suggestions along these lines will be spelled out on the first day of class, or you can email me.) If you are new to Dylan, you might consider reading the brief, entertaining, and inexpensive Rough Guide to Bob Dylan by Nigel Williamson over winter break to get a sense of his biography, works, and various incarnations.
Requirements: listening to music, analyzing lyrics, and viewing of films and videos; class attendance and participation; written reactions ready for class presentation; final exam.
(Please note: If enrollment goes onto a Wait List, I will try to arrange matters so that everyone gets into the course.) *This course will also count as a LTEN course.
LTEA 100C - CONTEMPORARY CHINESE POETRY
Taiwan Poetry
Instructor: Wai-Lim Yip
Because of many stages of settlement and occupation/colonization, the island of Taiwan is brimming with a rich, albeit engrossing interwebbing of different cultures. As reflected in poetic productions, each stage offers unique perceptions with aesthetic strategies that defy interpretations that gear to ONE dominating signifying complex such as the Euro-American model. They must be approached as tensional dialogues engendered in a multi-tradition terrain, including their ambivalent interactions with Japan and China, two of the major dominators in Taiwan’s cultural growth. The class proposes to embrace as much as possible the cultural nourishment of each stage, including the indigenous resistance and modifications in the process. We will read at least one sample of oral creations by the original peoples, the first owners of the island, whose cultural productions have been severely compromised.
We will read the poetry written in traditional classical Chinese wenyan format by the largest group of settlers, the Chinese, who became the new owners of this island, ancestors of the residents today. Their sense of existence was as agonizingly complex as it is ambivalent. During the fifty years of Japanese colonization since l895, while there were important attempts by Taiwanese-Chinese wenyan (classical Chinese) poets to preserve the legacy of the Mainland, there was also a high degree of internalization of the colonizer's culture--in spite of the fact that there were some writers who, longing for their "original homeland", returned to China (such as Zhong Lihe) and those who continued to resist their colonizer by keeping in touch with the critical spirit of the May 4th Era (such as Yang Kui). On the whole, they were what Wu Zhuoliu called "the orphans of Asia", with extremely complex and ambivalent feelings toward Japan and China. The poetry produced in these periods, mostly written in Japanese with roots in both Japan’s modernism (itself deriving from Europe)and that from China. And because of competing political agenda of the KMT and DPP parties, these defining moments have not been given adequate, serious treatment, at least, they have not occupied much of the curriculum in the education planning in Taiwan, let alone in English outside Taiwan. The major part of the class will be devoted to the modernist poetry produced from the 1950’s to 1970’s and the subsequent extensions and modifications of this movement and reactions to it. The reactions, which have now come under the rubric of nativist revival, sharpen and at the same problematize the question of identity, ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘new Taiwanese’ being two prominent slogans. Both the modernists and the nativists have produced, up to now, one of the richest poetic productions in all Chinese-speaking regions, including modern China. Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTEA 110B - MODERN CHINESE FICTION IN TRANSLATION
Instructor: Larissa Heinrich
A reading-intensive class designed to familiarize students with the origins of contemporary Chinese pop culture/s by reviewing the roots of popular culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Students will do intensive reading each week, as well as two papers, a mid-term, a final exam, and in-class presentations.
LTEA 142 - SOUTH KOREAN FILM, LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE
The Cold War, the Korean War and Korean Modernity, 1945-1961
Proposed Instructor: Junghyun Hwang
This course examines South Korean cultural history from 1945 to 1961 from a transnational perspective by juxtaposing literary works and films from both South Korea and the United States. In our era of globalization, the domestic and the foreign become increasingly inseparable, converging instead at the “borderlands” reciprocally shaping domestic social relations in response to international power struggles and vice versa. Korea has been one of America’s crucial foreign sites since 1945, through which U.S. domestic as well as foreign policies were shaped, resisted, and negotiated, and conversely, American Cold War discourses spilled over national boundaries to be reinforced and recast in foreign loci such as Korea.
In bringing South Korean popular imagination of the long 1950s into a comparative perspective, we will be paying particular attention to contextualizing the Korean War both within the international Cold War context and from the specific perspective of Korean national history. We will examine popular representations of the Korean War in the U.S. and proceed to delve into a broad range of South Korean cultural concerns regarding the colonial past, national division, the Korean War, nation-building, modernization, family and gender relations, and contemporary popular and consumer culture.
LTEN 22 - INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE OF THE BRITISH ISLES: 1660 - 1832
Instructor: Kathryn Shevelow
This survey course covers the literature written in the British Isles from the Restoration period in the second half of the seventeenth century through the Romantic period in the early nineteenth century. These one hundred and seventy years were a time of profound change on all levels: political, economic, social, and literary. These changes included industrialization and imperial expansion; the growing power of the middle classes; changes in thinking about gender; revolution (the American, the French and the Haitian), radicalism, and political backlash; the growth of evangelicalism; and the rise of reform movements such as abolition, Catholic emancipation and animal protection. For the literary world, this was a time of the growth of the publishing industry; battles between “high” and “low” culture; the development of a new, important genre that came to be called the novel; and the emergence of professional women writers. This course will examine representative literary texts in the context of these and other historical developments. We will be reading some of the major examples of poetry, drama, essays and novels written during this period. Our primarily textbooks will be the Norton Anthology of English Literature (8th edition) Vol. C: The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Vol. D: The Romantic period. We will also read Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and a short novel from the later part of our period.
LTEN 26 - INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES: 1865 - PRESENT
Instructor: Meg Wesling
In this survey of literatures written in the U.S. since the Civil War, we’ll take as our theme “Narrating Our Americas,” reconsidering the relation between American literature and U.S. nationhood as a way of posing a number of questions about the historical importance of literary study. In particular, we will trace the development of the idea of “the people” across 150 years, considering how literary texts, from late nineteenth-century populism to early twenty-first century popular culture, have constructed competing and often contradictory understandings of U.S. culture. We’ll pay particular attention to the evolution of national identity in relation to major social and economic transformations such as industrialization, migration, and urbanization; to explosive cultural developments like the introduction of mass consumer technologies of film and television; and to radical political reorientations through broad-scale movements like anti-racist struggles, feminist movements, and workers’ rights. Our goal will be to conceive of the literary in dynamic relation to the cultural and political history of the U.S. since 1865, to ask how these literary texts offer their own visions of U.S. history, and to consider how these visions might productively challenge and radically reshape our notions of Americanness in the twenty-first century.
LTEN 28 - INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Immigration, Race, and U.S. Modernity
Instructor: Lisa Lowe
This introductory course focuses on the study of literature by Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, as expressions of the racialized histories of groups immigrating from origins ranging from China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, to South Asia and Southeast Asia. Novels, short fiction, and films will be the media for studying the “immigrant narrative,” and its revision, complication, or disruption by the heterogeneity of national origins, the uneven shift from non-citizenship to citizenship, the 19th-century to post-1965 immigrations, displacements by U.S. wars in Asia, the loss of ‘culture’ and the invention of ‘tradition,’ the spatiality of ethnic enclaves and suburbia, and gender roles and relations in immigrant communities. Texts include novels and short fiction by Fae Myenne Ng, Hisaye Yamamoto, John Okada, Bienvenido Santos, Jessica Hagedorn, Chang-rae Lee, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lê Thi Diem Thúy; films by Renee Tajima-Peña, Wayne Wang, Rea Tajiri, and Lise Yasui.
LTEN 112 - SHAKESPEARE: ELIZABETHAN PERIOD (a)
Instructor: Louis Montrose
A lecture/discussion course exploring the rich and varied achievements of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. Issues of form, theme, action, and language will be studied in the context of Shakespeare’s theatre and society. Six plays will be read, including comedies, histories, and tragedies. Film versions of a number of these will be viewed and discussed. Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTEN 127A - THE VICTORIAN PERIOD: THEMES AND ISSUES
Literature and Culture of Victorian Britain (b)
Instructor: Margaret A. Loose
Imagine leaping backwards 150 years to an unfamiliar culture to listen in on their disputes, which might have tackled questions such as: how do we reconcile our religious and philosophical values of individual freedom and responsibility with our enslavement of thousands around the world? Are our beliefs about white, English superiority grounded in reality or on the need to solve the dilemma of our professed belief in universal human dignity and our practice of human degradation? What’s happening to our women? Are they the domestic preservers of our morality and peace, or are they insatiably sexual beings whose moral corruption leads them to prostitution? What’s all this flap about education when women aren’t voters or professionals? What impact will the free-thinkers, atheists, and working-class radicals have on our Protestant heritage? Is the Church of England really guilty of gross abuses that should be publicly (not internally) corrected? This course will raise and attempt to answer many such questions by examining what the Victorians themselves wrote about them. In grappling with these issues, we will also study some linguistic and psychological aspects of their poetry and autobiography, the social implications of their essays, and the aesthetic principles of their fiction. I will provide historical, economic, and literary context to introduce these arenas of Victorian debate, and students will be asked to write one final essay, prepare discussion questions and reading responses on a weekly basis, actively participate in discussion, and take a final exam.
LTEN 159 -CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
“The Times They Are Changin’:”1960s Popular Music in Cultural Context (d)
Instructor: Robert Cancel
Contrary to current mythology, most popular music during the decade of the 1960s was neither revolutionary nor particularly innovative. Mainstream radio was mostly AM and the music industry controlled what was played and created for the teen audiences. It was only in the late 1960s that innovations born of the rise of FM radio, national cultural politics, the confluence of several genres of music, and formerly underground publications began to change the shape of popular musical tastes. We will consider music from the entire decade, reading not only histories of the industry and its performers, but also cultural criticism developed first by the emerging “rock press” of the late sixties and contemporary cultural studies looking back at that period.
We will examine the roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll (including Blues, R&B, and Rockabilly), the musical streams of the decade (teen idols through surf music, the folk revival, the British Invasion, the San Francisco scene, guitar heroes, etc.), and also learn the economics of the industry and the major role played by record producers and song-writers. Moreover, the political and economic history that shaped the decade will be seen as profoundly influencing the evolution of popular music and its reception. Readings and listening will be combined with lectures and video material, and discussion will be highly encouraged in class. At least three in-class writing assignments/quizzes will be administered. Two papers will be required: an initial five-page essay and a final ten- to twelve-page research paper.Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTEN 172 - AMERICAN POETRY II -- WHITMAN THROUGH THE MODERNISTS (d)
Pound, Williams, Stevens
Instructor: Wai-Lim Yip
In their fight against the regimentation of the lifeworld, the "iron cage" of instrumental reason that has led to a reductive humanity--"one-dimensional man", alienated, reified, commodified, and "colonized"--in other words, a new form of domination, the modernists in the U.S., following the suggestions of Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Rimbaud, have come up with their own counter-discourses, their own forms of aesthetic resistences rooted in their own socio-political specificities. In this course, we will explore in full three major figures, Pound, Stevens and Williams.
The Poundian project, especially as it is disclosed in the Cantos , can be described as a non-matrixed presentation characterized by the destruction of linearity, syntax, and temporal order, calling for a simultaneaous "happening" or acting-out of luminous cultural moments as patterned energies; poetry, stripped of Aristotelian rigidity and superficiality, has become for Pound the medium into which and out of which myth, history and personal drama constantly undergo metamorphoses providing humans an intelligence for total order. In this dynamic process, Pound tells us, only be resting with the Confucian order and the Eleusian mystery can we reach back to the precise definition of things (Cheng Ming and/or mot juste ), the root of a totalism in which the ethical, the aesthetic and the cosmic become an indistinguishable whole.
The road to this project, which was never, and perhaps can never be completed, is quite tortuous, complicated, and even astray sometimes.
Therefore, we would begin with some of the early starting-points in his Personae and work through the Chinese translations, the Fenollosa essay on Chinese characters, his "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" to his Cantos. Special attention will be given to the development of the following strategic perceptual-expressive nodes: myth-as-mask (phatastikon), monologues (Browning/Yeats), persona, moment (Pater, impressionism, symbolism), luminous detail, virtu, image/ imagism (including Hulme's intensive manifold), vortex/vorticism (patterned energies), juxtaposition/montage, ideogram/ideogrammic method, forma, etc. Culturally, we would examine the "touch-stone" cultural moments Pound appropriated from ancient classics and foreign texts to disclose his eclectic cultural vision, including his ambiguous relationship to the Confucian order and to fascism.
The odysseys made by Williams and Stevens are very different from that by Pound (and Eliot) who continue to travel away from "real" things and locations in spite of Pound's call for the natural symbol during his imagist period. Pound (and Eliot) allow their transcendental impulses and the human subject to dominate, frame and disfigure the "real" things. Stevens and Williams, in many ways echoing important tangents of William James and A. Whitehead, locate their aesthetic objects on the "real". Both Stevens' statements: "To see the world with an ignorant eye", " Of Mere Being" and those of Williams: "Not ideas but in things" "To embody in a work of art a new world that is always 'real'...No symbolism is acceptable" can be seen as the first major attempt to break away form transcendental obssessions toward recovering the "immanence" of things as they are. While Stevens'
"unresting mind" still intrudes into his "mere being", his poems-as- aesthetic-discourses about the real, often staged and acted out, not only make him a full terrestrial poet, but also make way for later poets to embark on the journey toward the immanence of things. While strictly speaking Williams is still a Mallarmean expressionist, he has also inherited from Hulme's rejection of abstract thought for concreteness and Pound's anti-discursive imagistic thinking. More importantly, it was William James' emphasis upon the real order of the world and Whitehead's insistance upon "immediate deliverance of experience" that have led him and the other postmodernists to embrace in full, without feeling their ego threatened, their mind in anxiety, the things as they really are in the original real world: "what is, is real." Williams once said, "unless there is/ a new mind there cannot be a new/ line", it is his act of faith in "what is, is real" that makes good and authentic his syntactical innovations. It is these innovations (together with Pound's) that have opened up new vistas for all the postmodern and contemporary American poets, dimensions yet to be matched by other European attempts.
LTEN 174 - AMERICAN FICTION II – SINCE MIDDLE JAMES (d)
Instructor: Ronald Berman
Literature 174(e) will cover the following:
Theordore Dreiser, SISTER CARRIE
Willa Cather, MY ANTONIA
Edith Wharton, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
Sinclair Lewis, BABBITT
T. S. Eliot, “Prufrock,” THE WASTE LAND and shorter poems
F. Scott Fitzgerald, selected stories
Ernest Hemingway, selected stories
Nathanael West, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST
The above readings range from the turn of century until the early thirties. They include authors like Eliot, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway who became famous modernists—and also authors who were committed to traditional kinds of narrative.
LTEN 175A - NEW AMERICAN FICTION: WWII-PRESENT (d)
Instructor: Meg Wesling
Stories of U.S. history and culture are replete with images and expressions lauding the bounty of American national space; the open road, the western frontier, the Great Plains – these are just a few of the defining images that construct our understanding of the land that stretches, as it is told, “from sea to shining sea.” Far from mere geographical references, such images tell stories about people, too, becoming part of the backdrop for our understanding of U.S. national identity, defining what we mean when we talk about “the American people.” This course aims to interrogate such images and expressions in order to consider the crucial ways in which our understandings of gender, race, and sexuality are linked inextricably to our concepts of place, nation, and personhood. How are assumptions about freedom and mobility coded in racialized and gendered terms? How are binarist categories of home/away, movement/stasis, and mobility/confinement, themselves gendered and racialized categories? We begin by looking at the narrative of the “discovery” of the New World before turning to contemporary perspectives on tourism, migration, and immigration in order to think critically and historically about the longstanding romance with mobility that is so central to U.S. national identity.
LTEN 176 - MAJOR AMERICAN WRITERS (c)
Making a Poet of Emily Dickinson
Instructor: Nicole Tonkovich
This class will have a dual focus: As we read the poetry of Emily Dickinson, we also will give attention to how her contemporaries--relatives, friends, and correspondents, as well as subsequent critics and scholars, have labored to excavate her biography, to probe her psyche, and to describe and classify her poetry. Thus, the course will have a historical component that will place the our present understanding of Dickinson as a Major American Author into a genealogy of critical frames and approaches. Like critic Betsy Erkkila, I am interested in investigating how the scholarly work around Dickinson has been an ongoing “struggle in which significant social and cultural values have been both produced and contested.” Readings will include both primary texts (Dickinson’s poetry) and secondary sources (biographies, critical estimations and interpretations).
LTEN 185 - THEMES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (c)
African American Humor
Instructor: Camille Forbes
This course is a study of African American humor, particularly in performance, from slavery (ca. 18th century) to today. The humor of African Americans has historically been divided, consisting of humor created by and for a black audience, and humor performed for a white audience. We will investigate the origins of this division, and the ways in which African American humor has shaped American culture. Keeping in mind the social and cultural context in which African American humor emerged and developed, we will take an interdisciplinary approach to our subject. We will use various materials from cartoons, folklore, literature, and film (among others) to study the African American comic tradition.
LTEN 186 - LITERATURE OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (d)
Instructor: Camille Forbes
This course examines the period (roughly 1920 to the early 1930s) that was known as the New Negro Movement, later referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. Although the Harlem Renaissance is often thought of as a literary movement, it was much more than this; it was a time of developing racial consciousness expressed through the arts. Our class will include incorporation of music as well as close readings of major poetry and prose writers studied in the context of cultural history. We seek to understand the sociocultural significance of the historical moment as well as the texts written during it.
LTEN
192 - SENIOR SEMINAR
Visual Artists of the Harlem Renaissance
Instructor: Camille Forbes
The Harlem Renaissance (roughly 1920-early 1930s) was a literary
movement, but also more than this; it was a time of developing
racial consciousness among blacks, expressed through various media,
including the visual and performing arts. This seminar will address
visual arts of the period. Prerequisites: Upper division standing;
department stamp and/or consent of instructor. Contact
Dawn Blessman to enroll in
the seminar. Seminar will meet January 5, 12, 26; February 2, 9, 23;
March 2, 9.
LTAM 111 (COMPARATIVE CARIBBEAN DISCOURSE)
LTCS 51 (INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES)\
LTCS 150 (TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES)
LTWL 120 (POPULAR CULTURE: YOUTH IN THE AGE OF ROCK)
LTWL 140 ( NOVEL AND HISTORY OF THE THIRD WORLD)
LTWL 155 (GENDER: CULTURES OF BULLYING AND INTIMIDATION)
LTWL 165 (LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT)
LTWL 184 (FILM STUDIES AND LITERATURE: CLOSE ANALYSIS OF FILMIC TEXT)
LTEN Upper Division Codes:
(a) = British Literature before 1660
(b) = British Literature after 1660
(c) = U.S. Literature before 1860
(d) = U.S. Literature after 1860
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LTEU 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR
Born to the Wild? The Novels of Hermann Hesse
Instructor: Todd Kontje
Who was Hermann Hesse? High-school drop-out, novelist, pacifist, Nobel Laureate,and center of a cult revival in the 1960s. Can his fiction speak to a new generation? We will see by reading Demian, Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Narcissus and Goldmund. Curious? Then come take a walk on the wild side. Seminar will meet Jan 5 (seminar intro, 3-4pm only), 12, 26, Feb 9, 23.
LTEU 109 -STUDIES IN 18TH CENTURY EUROPEAN LITERATURE
The French and German Enlightenment
Instructor: William O’Brien
It was during the period now rather glibly known as the ‘Enlightenment’ that many of the institutions and social practices of the modern age were established. The principles of reason, democracy, tolerance, and free expression are its legacy, a legacy that has experienced both implementation and erosion in the ensuing centuries. It is often forgotten that the Enlightement harshly criticized existing institutions, and also had its own dark (and sometimes perverse) sides. We will examine its optimistic, critical, and sinister sides.
In this course we will study some of the most influential and representative texts of the French and German Enlightenment to see how it defined the principles by which we believe we live. To a great extent, this will mean investigating the Enlightenment's understanding of the limits and operations of reason, democracy, tolerance, religion, sexuality, and free expression. In general, the first half of the course will concentrate on larger political issues (democracy, tolerance, oppression), the second half on more personal ones (morality, religion, decadence, debauchery.)
Readings:
Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"
Voltaire, Candide.
Rousseau, The Social Contract.
Lessing, "On the Education of the Human Race."
Schiller, Don Carlos.
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Diderot, The Nun.
Laclos, Les Liasons dangereuses.
Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom.
Requirements:
Attendance and class participation.
Two 6-page papers.
Final examination.
All readings and discussion in English. Course open to beginning and advanced students.
LTFR 2A - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH I
Instructor: TAs supervised by Catherine Ploye
Second-year course designed to be taken after 1C/CX. We undertake a thorough review of grammar while continuing to develop language skills (oral and written) by studying short stories, cartoons and movies from various French-speaking countries. May be applied towards a minor in French literature.
Prerequisite: LIFR 1C/CX or equivalent or a score of 3 on the AP French language exam.
LTFR 2B - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH II
Instructor: TAs supervised by Catherine Ploye
We continue the review of grammar begun in LTFR 2A. To strengthen language skills, plays from the 19Th and 20th centuries as well as the movie interpretation of Cyrano de Bergerac is studied. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement.
Prerequisite: LTFR 2A or equivalent or a score of 4 on the AP French language exam.
LTFR 21 - CONVERSATION WORKSHOP I
Instructor: TA supervised by Catherine Ploye
One-unit, one-meeting-a-week courses, designed to develop and maintain oral skills by discussing current cultural issues of the francophone world. These courses may be taken more than once, alone or in combination with any other literature course. Prerequisite: LIFR 1C/CX, 1D/1DX, LTFR 2A, 2B, 2C, 50 or consent of instructor.
LTFR 31 - CONVERSATION WORKSHOP II
Instructor: TA supervised by Catherine Ploye
One-unit, one-meeting-a-week courses, designed to develop and maintain oral skills by discussing current cultural issues of the francophone world. These courses may be taken more than once, alone or in combination with any other literature course.
Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or consent of instructor.
LTFR 50 - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH III: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
Instructor: Catherine Ploye
This course emphasizes the development of language skills and the practice of textual analysis. Discussions are based on the analysis of various poetic texts as well as on a film. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Students having completed 50 can register in upper-level courses (115 or 116). Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.
LTFR 116 - THEMES IN INTELLECTUAL AND LITERACY HISTORY
Instructor: Catherine Ploye
LTFr 116 est une introduction à quelques grands moments littéraires des 19e, 20e et 21e siècles. Une lecture attentive des textes ainsi qu’une présentation du contexte historique permettront de découvrir et de comprendre l’évolution de la scène littéraire de langue française. Nous lirons bien sûr un texte du prix Nobel 2008, Jean-Marie Le Clézio! Le cours est entièrement en français. Prerequisite: LTFR 2C or LTFR 50 or consent of instructor.
LTFR 121 - MIDDLE AGES & RENAISSANCE
Amour et Mariage
Instructor: Oumelbanine Zhiri
Dans ce cours, nous allons examiner des représentations de l’amour et du mariage dans des textes littéraires français du Moyen Age au XVII° siècle (fabliaux, Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, Molière). Prerequisite: LTFR 115 or 116.
LTFR 145 - CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT IN FRENCH
Littérature, guerre et résistance
Instructor: Marcel Hénaff
Ce cours propose de lire des textes d’auteurs français ou francophones du 20e siècle qui témoignent de l’engagement des écrivains dans des combats contre l’injustice, l’occupation militaire, la terreur, la domination coloniale, ou toute forme de répression. Nous alternerons la lecture de textes de fiction et de textes théoriques. Les principaux auteurs abordés seront Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Franz Fanon, Marguerite Duras, Robert Anthelme, Aimé Césaire, Henri Alleg, Kateb Yacine, Aïssa Djebar. - Ce cours sera accompagné de documents video (films de fiction et/ou documentaires).
The course will discuss 20th century French and Francophone writings
that exemplify writers' involvement in struggles against injustice,
military occupation, terror, colonial domination, or any other form
of oppression. We will read both fictional and theoretical writings.
The main authors considered will be Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Franz Fanon, Marguerite Duras, Robert Antelme, Aimé Césaire, Henri
Alleg, Kateb Yacine, and Aïssa Djebar. The course will be
complemented by video materials (fiction and/or documentary
features).
Prerequisite: LTFR 115 or 116 and upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTGM 2B - INTERMEDIATE GERMAN II
Proposed Instructor: Laurel Plapp
In this second course of the Intermediate German series, we use a multimedia approach to trace the dramatic events in post-war Germany, divided into East and West. We will read eyewitness accounts and personal journals about the tremendous impact of the Berlin Wall on everyday life. There will be videos of TV news and the feature film Das Versprechen, an East/West love story, as well as several short stories, including Brecht’s famous story “Augsburger Kreidekreis.” The course will also continue our review of German grammar. Language of instruction: German. Prerequisite: LTGM 2A or equivalent
LTGM 190 - SEMINARS IN GERMAN CULTURE:
Contemporary German Fiction and Film
nstructor: Todd Kontje
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989, reunified Germany has witnessed a creative explosion in literature and film. We will read just a few of the many outstanding authors writing in Germany today, including Günter Grass, Bernhard Schlink, Judith Hermann, Uwe Timm, W. G. Sebald, and Daniel Kehlmann. We will also view and discuss a few recent films, including Nirgendwo in Afrika and Das Leben der Anderen. Readings and class discussion in German.
LTGK 2 - INTERMEDIATE GREEK
Instructor: Leslie Edwards
We'll continue to make our way through the same introductory text. There will be longer passages of real Greek (Homer, Plato, Euripides, Theognis, New Testament, etc.) and more complexity....but also more pleasure! By the end of the term we will be prepared to embark on reading the Odyssey in Greek 3. Midterms, quizzes, and a final. Prerequisite: LTGK 1 or permission of the instructor.
LTGK 133 - PROSE
The Dialogues of Lucian
Instructor: Anthony Edwards
Lucian was born in Samosata on the banks of the Euphrates in the eastern reaches of the Roman empire in the first quarter of the second century AD. His career as a writer and orator took him from one end of the empire to the other, including Athens, where he is thought to have spent considerable time. We will be reading a selection of Lucian's comic dialogues, short conversations between gods or great men from the past, composed in flawless Attic Greek of the Classical period, 600 years earlier. Lucian's dialogues are short and fun to read, so they are a good choice for an introduction to Attic prose. Lucian's writings, moreover, open up broader questions of the status of Greek culture in the Roman empire and of Lucian, a Syrian by birth, as a Greek. We will begin the course with a grammatical review focusing on a transition to reading prose. Requirements: Daily translations, occasional outside readings, midterm, final, term paper. Prerequisites: LTGK 1, 2, 3 or equivalent.
No Course Offerings Winter 2009
LTIT 2B - INTERMEDIATE ITALIAN II
Instructor: Adriana De Marchi Gherini
A second-year course in Italian language and literature. Conversation, composition, grammar review, and an introduction to literary and nonliterary texts. Prerequisite: LTIT 1C, LIIT 1C/1CX, or equivalent or consent of the instructor.
LTIT 143 - MAJOR ITALIAN AUTHORS
Machiavelli, Leopardi, Pirandello
Instructor: Stephanie Jed
In questo corso, studieremo il rapporto tra letteratura e filosofia, mettendo a fuoco tre dei più grandi autori italiani: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), e Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936). Esaminando i testi di questi autori, cercheremo di definire il pensiero politico e il pensiero etico. Come definiamo la nostra esistenza? le nostre identità?
Studieremo, in particolare:
Il principe e La Mandragola di Machiavelli
I canti e Le operette morali di Leopardi
Uno, nessuno e centomila e Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore di Pirandello
Faremo esercizi di traduzione, un dialogo filosofico, e qualche tentativo di rappresentazione teatrale.
Prerequisites: LTIT 100 or consent of the instructor.
LTKO 1B - BEGINNING KOREAN: FIRST YEAR II
Instructors: TAs supervised by Jeyseon
Lee
Please visit our Korean Literature website at:
http://korean.ucsd.edu/ for a
course description for this course.
LTKO 1C - BEGINNING KOREAN: FIRST YEAR III
Instructors: TAs supervised by Jeyseon
Lee
Please visit our Korean Literature website at:
http://korean.ucsd.edu/ for a
course description for this course.
LTKO 2B - INTERMEDIATE KOREAN: SECOND YEAR II
Instructors: TAs supervised by Jeyseon
Lee
Please visit our Korean Literature website at:
http://korean.ucsd.edu/ for a
course description for this course.
LTKO 2C - INTERMEDIATE KOREAN: SECOND YEAR III
Instructors: TAs supervised by Jeyseon
Lee
Please visit our Korean Literature website at:
http://korean.ucsd.edu/ for a
course description for this course.
LTKO 3 - ADVANCED KOREAN: THIRD YEAR II
Instructors: TAs supervised by Jeyseon
Lee
Please visit our Korean Literature website at:
http://korean.ucsd.edu/ for a
course description for this course.
LTLA 2 - INTERMEDIATE LATIN
Instructor: Eliot Wirshbo
In this course, things will be piled higher and deeper, meaning more memorization, increasingly complex constructions, and a greater challenge involved in translating. For the diligent student, this means continued nose-to-the-grindstone work, but with a growing sense that the reward for one’s dedication is an enlarged ability to decode dense nuggets of meaning. For the indifferent student, there will be greater pressure to catch up on previous learning while trying to stay current with the new lessons. The demanding nature of the course cannot be masked: the drop-out rate is high because the demands are constant and unpleasant. Of course, for those who accept the nature of the incessant assignments, there is nothing but joy within the ordeal. Prerequisites: LTLA 1 or equivalent.
LTLA 2 - INTERMEDIATE LATIN
Instructor: Charles Chamberlain
We will cover the chapters 14-28 of Introduction to Latin by Susan C. Shelmerdine. This means a pace of about 1 or 2 chapters per week overall. Expect to have a quiz every Monday, plus 2 midterms and final. Quizzes are worth 20 %, the midterms 20 % each (totalling 40%), the final 30 %, class participation and other factors 10 %. (I also reserve the right to institute more frequent quizzes and to assign graded homework if necessary.)
Latin is not taught as a spoken language, so there will be no emphasis on conversing. However, there are many grammatical rules to be learned, perhaps more than you ever imagined. In some ways, Latin is more like math or science than it is like a modern foreign language; it will soon become impossible to "get the gist" of what you read unless you know the grammatical rules thoroughly. Therefore, I urge you not to fall behind -- it is very difficult to catch up. Prerequisites: LTLA 1 or equivalent.
LTLA 111 - PRE-AUGUSTAN
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
Instructor: Leslie Edwards
Lucretius' purpose in his poem De Rerum Natura is to persuade the reader to free himself/herself from the oppression of religious fears and superstition by means of enlightenment regarding the true material nature of the world. We’ll read selections from all parts of this epic/didactic poem, covering the atomic structure of the universe, the soul and the senses; the origin of our planet, the evolution of its life forms, and of human society. Paper, midterm and final. Prerequisites: LTLA 3 or equivalent.
No course offerings Winter 2009.
LTPR 50 - PORTUGUESE FOR SPANISH SPEAKERS
Brazilian Literature for Spanish Speakers.
Instructor: Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
This course incorporates instruction in Brazilian Portuguese language with the study of Brazilian culture, literature, film and music. Directed to students with a knowledge of the Spanish language, we will systematically refer to and compare Portuguese grammatical structures and vocabulary with those of Spanish in order to build on students' previous knowledge of the workings of the language and to speed the learning process. At the same time, the course will serve as an introduction to Brazilian cultural production, thus preparing students for further study in this area.
LTRU 1B - FIRST-YEAR RUSSIAN
Instructor: Rebecca Wells
Continue exploring the mechanics and mystery of Russian language, culture, and people. We will journey forth into all forms of communication: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. We will continue acquiring basic vocabulary and grammar skills and attempt to apply them both mechanically and creatively. Original Russian materials will supplement the basic text and language lab tapes. This course meets two days per week for grammar lectures and two days per week for conversation. Every effort will be made to integrate material on Russian culture into the language curriculum.
LTRU 2B - SECOND-YEAR RUSSIAN
Instructor: Rebecca Wells
Continuing expansion of previous language acquisitions and introduction to new, unexplored territories. While systematically reviewing grammar, we will begin focusing on the language for more creative purposes in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Language lab videos and readings texts will supplement the basic text. This course meets two days a week for grammar lectures and two days per week for conversation. Every effort will be made to integrate material on Russian culture into the language curriculum. Prerequisites: LIRU 33/53, LTRU 1A-B-C or equivalent.
LTRU 104B - ADVANCED PRACTICUM IN RUSSIAN
Instructor: Rebecca Wells
Development of advanced skills in reading, writing, and conversation. Course based on written and oral texts of various genres and styles. Individualized program to meet specific student needs. May be substituted for LTRU 101 A-B-C as requirement for major. Prerequisite: LTRU 2C or equivalent.
LTRU 110A - RUSSIAN AND SOVIET LITERATURE: 1800-1860
Instructor: Steven Cassedy
Classic Russian literature from 1800 to 1860. The syllabus will include works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy.
INTERMEDIATE COURSES IN SPANISH
LANGUAGE/LITERATURE:
The introductory Spanish sequence (1ABCD) is offered through the Linguistics Language Program (see http://ling.ucsd.edu/Language/llp.htm)
Intermediate language and upper-level language and literature courses are offered through the Literature Department see: http://literature.ucsd.edu/ugrad/litandlang/spanish/spanishoffer.html
Contact bpita@ucsd.edu or gmcevoy@ucsd.edu for further information and with questions regarding placement in the Intermediate Spanish program. Heritage speakers of Spanish are encouraged to contact the instructor to insure proper placement.
Students in LTSP 2A and 2B must attend both the lecture and discussion sections of the course.
Note: The final examinations for LTSP 2ABCDE & 50ABC will be held in common; see below for dates.
LTSP 2A - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH l: FOUNDATIONS
Instructor: TAs supervised by Beatrice Pita/G. Mc Evoy
This 5 unit intermediate course meets 4 days per week and is taught entirely in Spanish. LTSP 2A emphasizes the development of communicative skills, reading ability, listening comprehension and writing skills. It includes grammar review, short readings, class discussions and working with Spanish-language video and Internet materials. This course is designed to prepare students for LTSP 2B and 2C. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisites: Completion of Li/Sp 1C/CX, its equivalent, or a score of 3 on the AP Spanish language exam.
Note: The Final Exam for LTSP 2A is scheduled for Monday, March 16th, 2009.
Contact instructors with any questions regarding placement.
LTSP 2B - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH ll: READINGS AND COMPOSITION
Instructor: TAs supervised by Beatrice Pita/G. Mc Evoy
This intermediate course is designed for students who wish to improve their grammatical competence, ability to speak, read and write Spanish. It is a continuation of LTSP 2A with special emphasis on problems in writing and interpretation. Students meet with the instructor 4 days per week. Work for this 5 unit course includes oral presentations, grammar review, writing assignments, class discussions on the readings and work with Spanish-language video and Internet materials. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisites: Completion of LTSP 2A, its equivalent, or a score of 4 on the AP Spanish language exam.
Note: The Final Exam for LTSP 2B is scheduled for Monday, March 16th, 2009.
Contact instructors with any questions regarding placement.
LTSP 2C - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH lll: CULTURAL TOPICS AND COMPOSITION
Instructor: TAs supervised by Beatrice Pita
The goal of this intermediate language course is twofold: to further develop all skill areas in Spanish and to increase Spanish language-based cultural literacy. LTSP 2C is a continuation of the LTSP second-year sequence with special emphasis on problems in grammar, writing and translation. It includes class discussions of cultural topics as well as grammar review and composition assignments. The course will further develop the ability to read articles, essays and longer pieces of fictional and non-fictional texts as well as the understanding of Spanish-language materials on the Internet. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Completion of LTSP 2B, its equivalent, or a score of 5 on the AP Spanish language exam. This course satisfies the third course requirement of the college-required language sequence as well as the language requirement for participation in UC-EAP.
Note: The Final Exam for LTSP 2C is scheduled for Monday, March 16th, 2009.
LTSP 2D - INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED SPANISH: SPANISH FOR HERITAGE SPEAKERS I
Instructor: TAs supervised by Beatrice Pita
Designed for bilingual students who have been exposed to Spanish at home but have little or no formal training in Spanish. The goal is for students who are comfortable understanding, reading and speaking in Spanish to further develop existing skills and to acquire greater oral fluency, and grammatical control through grammar review, and reading and writing practice. Building on existing strengths, the course will allow students to develop a variety of Spanish language strategies to express themselves in Spanish with greater ease and precision. Prepares native-speakers for more advanced courses. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Native speaking ability and/or recommendation of instructor.
Note: The Final Exam for LTSP 2D is scheduled for Monday, March 16th, 2009.
Enrollment for LTSP 2D requires departmental pre-authorization.
Contact instructor with any questions regarding placement.
LTSP 2E - ADVANCED SPANISH READINGS AND COMPOSITION: SPANISH FOR HERITAGE SPEAKERS Instructor: TAs supervised by Beatrice Pita/G. Mc Evoy
An advanced/intermediate course designed for bilingual students who may or may not have studied Spanish formally, but possess good oral skills and seek to become fully bilingual and biliterate. Reading and writing skills stressed with special emphasis on improvement of written expression, vocabulary development and problems of grammar and orthography. Prepares native-speakers with a higher level of oral proficiency for more advanced courses. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Native speaking ability and/or recommendation of instructor.
Note: The Final Exam for LTSP 2E is scheduled for Monday, December 8th, 2008.
Enrollment for LTSP 2E requires departmental pre-authorization.
Contact instructor with any questions regarding placement.
LTSP 31 - CONVERSATION WORKSHOP II
Instructor: TAs supervised by Beatrice Pita/G. Mc Evoy
Designed to allow students with a basic grounding in Spanish to discuss a variety of topics related to literary and current cultural issues. Focus will be on vocabulary development, use of idiomatic expressions and advancing oral proficiency in Spanish. Pre-requisites: Li/Sp 1C/CX or consent of the instructor.
Note: This conversation/discussion class meets once a week. May be taken as an adjunct to lower division LTSP courses, alone, or in combination with any other LTSP course. Recommended for students planning to study abroad. May be taken 3 times for credit as topics vary. May be taken P/NP or for a letter grade.
LTSP 50B - READINGS IN LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Instructor: TAs supervised by Beatrice Pita
This course introduces students to literary analysis through the close textual reading of a selection of Latin American texts including novels, plays, short fiction and poetry. Coursework includes reading of texts, participation in class discussions and written assignments. Lit/Sp 50B prepares Literature majors and minors for upper-division work. Lit/Sp 50A and either 50B or 50C are required for Spanish Literature majors.
May be applied towards a minor in Spanish Literature or towards fulfilling the second literature requirement for Literature majors. Prerequisites: Completion of LTSP 2C, 2D, 2E or 2 years of college level Spanish.
Notes: The Final Exam for Lit/Sp 50B is scheduled for Monday, March 16th, 2009.
Contact instructor Beatrice Pita with any questions regarding placement.
LTSP 119C - CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Instructor: Jorge Mariscal
A reading of two 17th-century novels that some people (who think it is one novel) have called "the greatest novel of all time." We will focus on the society in which a military veteran, former prisoner of war, and failed dramatist-poet (Cervantes) transformed early modern narrative forms in order to attack one of the underlying discriminatory principles of his culture--blood purity (or what modern racists would call "racial purity"). We will learn why these two books are not "the greatest novel of all time" and why they have little to do with windmills and nothing to do with "the impossible dream." Students will be asked to read carefully and formulate analyses of the texts. Prerequisites: LTSP 50A and either 50B or 50C
LTSP 130B - DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Instructor: Jaime Concha
Estudio del desarrollo de las letras hispanoamericanas a través de textos representatives por épocas. Se comenzará con parte del Popol Vuh maya-quiché finalizando alrededor de 1900, con la revolcuión modernista. Estarán representados los momentos del descubrimiento y de la coquista y los períodos colonial, ilustrado pre-independentista y algunas manifestaciones destacadas del republican, etc. Dos examines, uno intermedio, otro final. Prerequisites: LTSP 50A and either 50B or 50C.
LTSP 133 - CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Instructor: Jaime Concha
Este año 2009 se celebra el centenario del uruguayo Juan Carlos Onetti, uno de los narradores más importantes del siglo pasado. Tuvo la gracia y el buen gusto de no pertenecer al más exitoso boom literario y de jamás transar con la comercialización ambiente, hoy rampante. Leeremos tres de sus novelas fundamentals: Tierra de nadie, La vida breve y Juntacadáveres, más algunos cuentos y otros textos misceláneoS. Un examen intermedio, más un examen final o paper. Prerequisites: LTSP 50B or 50C.
LTSP 140 - LATIN AMERICAN NOVEL: DETECTIVE FICTION
Instructor: Milos Kokotovic
¿Qué es el crimen cuando el sistema mismo es criminal? ¿Quién defiende el orden público cuando el estado ni está en orden ni pertenece al público? En este curso vamos a leer novelas negras o policiacas recientes de varios países latinoamericanos. Analizaremos la forma en que esta obras representan la creciente pobreza, desigualdad, corrupción, crimen y violencia de los últimos 20 años en América Latina, y la manera en que critican estos fenómenos y sus causas. Como la novela negra es un género predominantemente urbano, también estudiaremos la representación de las ciudades latinoamericanas en estos textos (el D.F., Santiago, la Habana). Prerequisites: LTSP 50B or 50C.
LTSP 142 - LATIN AMERICAN SHORT STORY
Instructor: Rosaura Sanchez
The course will focus on different modalities of the short story genre. More specifically we will read several 20th century short stories that fall within three categories: fantastic stories, detective stories, and women's short stories. Prerequisite: LTSP 50B or 50C.
LTSP 174 - TOPICS IN CULTURE AND POLITICS CONTEMPORARY
Mexican Cinema
Instructor: Isaac Artenstein
This course will explore the themes, aesthetics and social concerns of Mexico’s new generation of filmmakers. Students will screen representative films in the Film and Video Reserves. Assigned readings and film clips will complement class lectures. Close attention will be paid to on-screen content reflecting Mexican history, society, culture, politics and economics while exploring issues of class, race, ethnicity, gender and language. Many of the filmmakers whose work is encompassed in this class have gone on to direct major Hollywood films. We will go “behind the screen,” and discuss how Mexican films get financed, produced and distributed in this global context. Prerequisites: LTSP 50A, 50B or 50C.
LTSP
176 - LITERATURE AND NATION: CUBAN HISTORY
Instructor: Sara Johnson
Este curso es una introducción a la cultura cubana a través
de la literatura, la música y las artes visuales. Examina
momentos históricos integrales al desarrollo de la nación,
incluyendo la época colonial, las Guerras de Independencia contra
España, el período republicano y la influencia de los E.U., la
Revolución de 1959, y el “período especial” contemporáneo.
Explorando el concepto de “Cuba Libre,” examina cómo el término
representa visiones diferentes de la sociedad ideal según la
política
LTTH 110 - HISTORY OF CRITICISM
Proposed Instructor: Randall Williams
This course serves as an introduction to the major 20th century schools of literary and cultural criticism. The methodologies that we will survey include Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Structuralist, Post-Structuralist, Feminist, and Post-Colonial. Criticism is the name given here to the systematic practice of political interpretation. We will read essays from Eagleton, Freud, James, Marx, Said, Sarlo, Schwarz, Spivak and Wicomb. There will be a mid-term exam and a final paper (10-12pp).
LTTH 150 - INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THEORY
Literary Theory
Proposed Instructor: Eliza Slavet
Psychoanalysis: Back to Freud and Beyond This course will be an in-depth exploration of the works, culture, history and theories of Sigmund Freud. What is “psychoanalysis”? We will “go back” to Freud, reading him as literature and on literature. Topics will include: dreams, jokes, sex, god, history, memory and forgetting, telephones and telepathy, obsessive actions and religious practices, totems and taboos, collective hysterias and neuroses, and Moses. In addition to Freud, readings will include texts by Abraham and Torok, Derrida, Fliess, Ginzburg, Jung, Lacan, Popper, White, and Zizek. Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTWL 4C - FILM AND FICTION IN TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIETIES
Aesthetics of Asian Cinema
Instructor: Yingjin Zhang
This class is an introduction to Asian cinema through appreciation of its multifaceted dimensions of aesthetics. Instead of attempting an inadequate survey of Asian film history in ten weeks, we will pursue close readings of ten select films by internationally renowned directors such as Akira Kurosawa, Wong Kar-Wai, and Edward Yang, aside from discussing recommended titles for further viewing. Our emphasis is placed as much on aesthetic (stylistic) and thematic (narrative) aspects as on conceptual (ideological) and cultural ones. Keyed to individual films, weekly topics include (1) aesthetics of narrative suspense (Rashomon [Japan, 1950]), (2) aesthetics of traumatic memory (Rhapsody in August [Japan, 1981]), (3) aesthetics of gender performance (Woman Demon Human [China, 1987]), (4) aesthetic of reflexive nostalgia (In the Mood for Love [Hong Kong, 2000]), (5) aesthetics of natural landscape (Chunhyangt [South Korea, 2000]), (6) aesthetics of globalized cityscape (Autumn Moon [Hong Kong, 1993]), (7) aesthetics of romanticized mindscape (The Scent of Green Papaya [Vietnam, 1994]), (8) aesthetic of postmodern comedy (Big Shot’s Funeral [China, 2000]), and (9) aesthetics of translocal life (Yiyi [Taiwan 2000]). All films carry English subtitles, and your knowledge of these films and the required reading will be tested in papers and exams.
LTWL 19B - INTRODUCTION TO THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS
Instructor: Eliot Wirshbo
This course exposes students to some of the best that was thought and written in the classical age of ancient Greece. The selections for reading are purposely eclectic, so that the wide range of the period’s intellectual ferment may be appreciated. This being a lower-division course, students are not expected to arrive at new perspectives on the material. Instead, it will be sufficient if they can simply master what was said by the ancient authors. But even this will not always be a straightforward task, since some of the readings are quite crabbed and rhetorical; most make explicit references to contexts and characters which strike no spark of recognition. But this is part of the broadening nature of education: through a study of the particulars of another world, you’ll begin to discern general truths highly pertinent to (y)our own. Two five-page papers, mid-term, final.
LTWL 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR
Introduction to Islam
Instructor: Babak Rahimi
This seminar explores the history and religion of Islam. It mainly focuses on theological doctrines and ritual life of Islamic societies from the 7th century to the modern period. We will particularly focus on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in contemporary history. Seminar will meet January 7, 14, 21, 28; February 4, 11, 18, 25.
LTWL 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR
U.S. War Films
Instructor: Winifred Woodhull
US/European war films, Dr. Zhivago to Saving Private Ryan to Indigènes. We will discuss narrative, lighting, setting, editing, cinematography, and sound, as well as the social context of the wars and the films' representations thereof. The course assumes no prior work in film studies.
LTWL 100 - MYTHOLOGY
Literature of the Law in Ancient Greece and Rome
Instructor: Page duBois
The ancient Greeks invented trial by jury. The Roman orator Cicero gave brilliant speeches in the Roman courts, models of eloquence for centuries. In this course, we will look at the law in ancient Greece and Rome, and at its presentation in written texts. We will read the Oresteia, in which the tragedian Aeschylus justifies trial by jury in ancient Athens, as well as a Greek comedy that mocks citizen jurors. We will read Socrates' Apology, his defence before an Athenian court that condemned him to death and made him the founding martyr of philosophy. We will read some Greek legal speeches involving sacrilege and other crimes, some of Cicero's orations in Roman murder cases, and end with the speech given in his own defence by an African novelist of the Roman empire, accused of practicing magic.
This course will be useful for pre-law students, as well as those interested in the history of the law and of ancient societies.
LTWL 120 - POPULAR LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Instructor: Stephen Potts
In the early years of the 20th century, a combination of historical forces in the U.S. laid the groundwork for a distinct youth culture that first peaked in the Jazz Age of the 1920s. In the aftermath of World War II, youth acquired even greater social importance as the Age of Rock commenced. In this course we will examine the movements, fads, fashions, and pop arts that shaped the subcultures of teens and twenty-somethings—from the Beats of the 50s through the Boomer Revolution of the 60s to more recent MTV and Wired generations. In the process we will read cult novels, excerpt the movies and music, and discuss the trends that have made youth culture an essential institution of postmodern society.*This course will also count as a LTEN course.
LTWL 128 - INTRODUCTION TO SEMIOTICS AND APPLICATIONS
Dangerous Liaisons and Film Adaptation
Instructor: Alain J.-J. Cohen
The novel and its film adaptations will be used as a base to work with the semiotics of narrative. A.k.a. as “narrativity,” “narratics” or “narratology,” with origins dating back to Aristotle’s Poetics, narrative analysis has grown exponentially as a discipline over the last thirty years: we tell “stories” first and afterwards “discover” retroactively the rules and systems governing various types of narratives – just as we learn to speak first and study afterwards the syntax and semantics governing speech and discourse. The domain of narrative analysis is one of the most researched entries into the field of semiotics, and its practitioners now dispose of technical methods of approaching texts. Semiotics is generally characterized by the search for models, sign systems, meaning systems, and the application of language and literary models to non language-based disciplines. Are there models, logics, methods, rules, grammars, narratives, poetics which are pertinent to painting, film, music, architecture, science, culture? Can these technical models in turn be applicable to everydaylife fields such as analysis of conversation, fashion, media, et al.?
At the end of the course, students will have studied:
- Methods and techniques of close analysis in order to focus on a few letters from Dangerous Liaisons (1782), the well-known eighteenth-century epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803).
- One of the film adaptations of the novel (Vadim 1959, Frears 1988, Forman 1989), or its Cruel Intentions adaptation in 20th-century Manhattan (e.g. Kumble 1999). (Music students may substitute one of the opera versions of Laclos’s novel.)
- The prehistory of narrative semiotics (excerpts from Aristotle, Propp, Barthes);
- The present global efflorescence of Narrative theory (1970s-1990s), with emphasis upon the Paris School of Semiotics, Umberto Eco’s theories, and parallel US research on narrative in literary theory and cognitive science;
- Questions of transposition and film adaptation.
This course will be held in seminar style. It is open to advanced students (and interested graduate students as well). Students will present a detailed paper project by week V. The final papers will address either (a) or (b) above.
Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTWL 140 - NOVEL AND HISTORY OF THE THIRD WORLD
Instructor: John D. Blanco
In an often-quoted remark, German philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt claimed that: “the Third World is not a reality but an ideology.” Yet over half a century after the coinage of the term “Third World” by Alfred Sauvy, it continues to be used as a way of distinguishing the national economies and politics of western Europe and the US from those of the rest of the world – even the “Second World,” which was originally defined as the Soviet bloc of totalitarian governments from World War II to the fall of the Berlin wall. How does Arendt’s contention affect our study of the novel as a literary genre in the twentieth century? What reality lies behind the ideologies of “development,” “progress,” and “civilization,” as well as their negative counterparts (underdevelopment, backwardness, brutal savagery)? And what other ways of seeing and participating in the world emerge from these realities? This course will focus on a close reading of five novels that address these questions in their complexity.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
Alejo Carpentier, Kingdom of This World
Kerima Polotan, Hand of the Enemy
Arundhati Roi, The God of Small Things
*This course will also count as a LTEN course.
LTWL 153 -LITERATURE, RELIGION, AND CULTURE IN IRAN
Instructor: Babak Rahimi
This class explores the relationship between literature, religion and culture in modern Iranian history. We will be studying the works of writers like Sadeq Hedayat, Jalal al-Ahmad and Ali Shariati and discuss the cultural causes behind the 1979 Iranian revolution. We will also watch a number of post-revolutionary Iranian films and short stories, and try to understand how they reflect major changes in contemporary Iranian society.Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of the instructor.
LTWL 155 - GENDER STUDIES
Cultures of Bullying and Intimidation
Instructor: Roddey Reid
This class will study bullying and intimidation in daily life, especially in the U.S., focusing on schools, the workplace, the media, and the world of politics. A universal problem it goes by many names: “ijime” in Japan, “mobbing” in Scandinavia, “bullying” in the UK and Commonwealth countries, “intimidation” and “harcèlement moral” in France, “psychological terror” in Germany, “el acoso moral” in Spanish-speaking countries, and “harassment,” “bullying,” and “emotional abuse” in the U.S. Yet, there’s a virulence and prevalence of bulling in the U.S. virtually unmatched anywhere else in terms of its reach, depth, and legitimacy. Foreign observers note this and commonly refer to it as the “American culture of bullying.” Unlike in many European nations it is not illegal, and although a subject of endless commentary in the U.S. press it is little studied and consequently little understood as a practice of humiliating others primarily in terms of stigmatizing gender and sexual stereotypes.
Students will have the opportunity to look at the recent history of bullying in relation to changing gender roles, traditions of everyday violence, transformation of the workplace by the downsizing and deregulation of businesses, zero-tolerance drug policies, boot camp and incarceration practices, shock radio and TV, Internet listservs and blogs, and recent political campaigns. Sources include selections from the business and popular press including Stanley Bing, Crazy Bosses: Spotting Them, Serving Them, Surviving Them (1992); management literature; anti-bullying movement literature such as Marie-France Hirigoyen, Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity (2000); human rights reports; political theorists such as Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (2004); and films such as Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987), Gus Van Zant’s Elephant (2003), and serials such as NBC’s reality TV show, The Apprentice (2004-present).
This course qualifies to count towards the Critical Gender Studies Major and Minor. *This course will also count as a LTEN course.
LTWL 158A - NEW TESTAMENT TOPICS
The Apostle Paul and his Interpreters
Instructor: Dayna Kalleres
The Apostle Paul is a dominating, controversial figure in Christian History whose writings have fundamentally influenced Western Culture.
This course—a critical reading of the “Pauline Corpus” within the New Testament— considers two questions. First, who was Paul of Tarsus? That is, by contextualizing Pauline epistles within the socio-cultural, political and religious frameworks generated within the Roman Empire, what might we discover about the earliest Christian communities. Second, who has St. Paul become? After centuries of heated theological debate involving Paul, recent scholars have exposed disparities between the original intentions within and subsequent readings of his writings involving issues of sexuality, gender roles and the body, racial and ethnic difference, anti-Semitism, Christian supercessionism, religion and universalism.
LTWL 165 - LITERATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Stuff: Consuming Our World
Instructor: Pasquale Verdicchio
Taking as a starting point writings on consumerism by Stephanie Kaza and others we will then delve into the life of the stuff we use and consume on a daily and habitual basis. Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things (Northwest Environment Watch) will be our basic guide through which to analyze the cultural, social and environmental effects of the stuff that crowds our lives and fills our environment. Readings will include Gary Snyder, Stephanie Kaza, Wallace Stegner and a screening of Jennifer Baichwai’s Manufactured Landscapes. As part of the course requirements students will be asked to do an in-depth report and presentation on one "thing" that has prominence in their everyday life. *This course will also count as a LTEN course.
LTWL 176 - LITERATURE AND IDEAS
Environmental Literatures and Wilderness Thought
Instructor: Pasquale
Verdicchio
This course should appeal to anyone interested in the
literary history of environmental writing and issues, in other
words, to students of environmental studies and social sciences in
addition to literature majors. We will explore the vital
relationship between American literature and environmental values,
and attempt to explain how literary interpretations of the land have
influenced attitudes toward nonhuman nature. American authors have
been consistently concerned with, and inspired by, the idea of
wilderness as our culture moved from notions of a hostile
wilderness, to the Transcendentalist vision of divine nature, to
contemporary nature writers' concern with imperiled ecosystems.
Course will include readings of work by Joanna Macy, Gary Snyder,
Barry Lopez and Aldo Leopold.
LTWL 181 - FILM STUDIES AND LITRATURES
New German Cinema and Beyond
Proposed Instructor: Laurel Plapp
This course begins with a study of New German Cinema, an internationally acclaimed movement of the 1970s and 1980s prized for its formal experimentation and utopian energy. We will examine major films of Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Helke Sander in the context out of which they emerged. Issues will include national identity and ambivalence toward America and Hollywood. The course will continue with a comparison of the cinema of East and West Germany and will end with the paradigm shift in post-wall cinema of the Berlin Republic, culminating in the most recent work of prize-winning Turkish-German director Fatih Akin.
LTWL 184 - FILM STUDIES AND LITERATURE: CLOSE ANALYSIS OF FILMIC TEXT:
Film takes on World War II
Instructor: Alain J.-J. Cohen
More than sixty years after the fact, the subject of WW II has remained a haunting source of reflection on war, horror and evil for international film directors in order to address various ethical, political and psychological concerns through their filming strategies. German director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg presented the devastated landscape of the German mind as it comes to grips with itself after WWII in Hitler: A Film from Germany (1977). Italian director Luchino Visconti looked at the advent of Nazism along with the implosion of family and social boundaries in his cult film The Damned (1969), while Liliana Cavanni explored in s/m manner the trauma of identification-with-the-aggressor after WWII in the equally cult film Night Porter(1974). The same drives seemed to animate Alain Resnais (and his screenwriter M. Duras) in their meditation on WWII in the legendary Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). US director Steven Spielberg had different agendas, whether he chose to represent aspects of the Holocaust in Schindler’s List (1993), or the unfathomable and terrifying landing in Normandy at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan (1998). Through clips of the above-mentioned films, as well as a few others taken from more contemporary films up to the forthcoming Valkyrie (2008) with its fantasies of undoing WWII,the goal of the course will be to move methodically through these shifting filmic terrains to delineate historical and psychological explorations of war and trauma.
Precise methods of film analysis – frame and shot composition, shot-by-shot analysis, narrative programs, filmic figures, film genre, deep structure, integration of specific films into the history of cinema, and filmic poetics – will be emphasized during the first weeks of the term. Students will explore the case of the compelling effect of WW II cinema. “Veteran” students will be asked for work building upon their previous research. *This course will also count as a LTEN course.
LTWL 191 - HONORS SEMINAR
Instructor: Anna Joy Springer
Explorations in critical theory and method. This course, designed to prepare students to write an honors thesis, is open only to literature majors invited into the department’s Honors Program.
STUDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETED THEIR COLLEGE WRITING REQUIREMENTS
PRIOR TO ENROLLMENT IN LTWR 8 A-B-C
LTWR 8A, B, AND C ARE PREREQUISITE TO DECLARING A MAJOR IN WRITING.
STUDENTS ENROLLED IN LTWR 8B AND LTWR 8C ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND THREE READINGS IN THE NEW WRITING SERIES (INDICATED BY “LAB” BELOW). SEE LITERATURE DEPARTMENT FOR TIMES AND DATES.
LTWR 8B - WRITING POETRY
Instructor: Rae Armantrout
This course is an introduction to the basic elements of writing poetry, from syllable and line to stanza and finished poem. Lectures will cover topics such as metaphor, image, sound, and structure, focusing on how a poem makes meaning. Students will become more sophisticated readers and writers. You will turn in seven poems, a collaborative response paper, and a notebook with your reading responses, ideas for poems, and drafts.
There will be regular workshop sessions devoted to peer critique. In addition to lectures and workshops, students will be asked to attend three events in the New Writing Series. Prerequisite: completion of college writing requirement.
LTWR 8C - WRITING NON-FICTION
Proposed Instructor: Halle Shilling
Like all writers, nonfiction writers build characters, craft descriptions, and create symbols. Unlike poets and novelists, however, they cannot make something up. The class will examine multiple types of nonfiction writing, including memoir, narrative journalism and personal essay. We will examine how facts are woven into narrative forms to portray real, rather than imagined, people, places and events. At issue will be the nature of nonfiction writing and how we can write with style while sticking to the facts. Reading assignment will include a broad array of nonfiction models. Students will apply what they learn from the readings to their own nonfiction writing. Prerequisites: completion of college writing requirement
DEPARTMENT APPROVAL FOR UPPER-DIVISION WRITING COURSES IS AVAILABLE IN THE LITERATURE UNDERGRADUATE OFFICE FROM 9:00-3:30, MONDAY-FRIDAY. PRIORITY ENROLLMENT BEGINS 11/3 FOR SENIOR WRITING MAJORS, 11/4 FOR JUNIOR WRITING MAJORS, 11/5 FOR SENIOR WRITING MINORS, 11/6 JUNIOR WRITING MINORS, 11/7 FOR PRE-WRITING MAJORS, 11/10 FOR ALL OTHERS (UPPER-DIVISION STANDING WITH APPROPRIATE PREREQUISITE).
LTWR 100 - SHORT FICTION
Instructor: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
How does one transform a glorious chaos of experiences, obsessions, dreams, theories, and observations into a shapely and compelling story? This course will explore a variety of methods, both traditional and experimental, for making that transformation possible. An interest in craft and a sense of adventure are key. In addition to submitting stories for workshop, students will be asked to read widely, throw themselves into writing exercises, and contribute generously to discussions. Refining the ability to critique peers’ work will be of equal importance as developing one’s own writing. Readings may include stories by Angela Carter, Rick Moody, James Baldwin, Stuart Dybek, Kelly Link, Jorges Luis Borges, Grace Paley, Donald Barthelme, Anton Chekhov, Alice Walker, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mary Gaitskill. Prerequisites: LTWR 8A; department approval
LTWR 102 - POETRY
Proposed Instructor: Ben Doller
This is a course in the art of language. While other genres of
writing may (among the numerous things they do) ask us to tell a
story, to create dialogue, or to tell the truth, poetry is concerned
primarily with the expressive, performative, artistic use of
language. A poet is someone who is interested in––and driven to
explore––the various things that words can do.
With this in mind, and through a varied program of study, reading,
and writing, we will partake in a diversity of old and new
processes, methods, and concepts of poetic making and
interpretation. We will study and write in forms both "traditional"
and "radical"—with an emphasis placed on what these constructions
might mean in an international 21st Century. And, taking notions and
cues from various other forms of art, we will seek to expand our
sense of what constitutes the "poetic." With weekly writing and
reading assignments, we will seek to immerse ourselves in poetry and
the poets we will be in the process of becoming. Plan on writing and
revising at least 10 poems, working closely with your peers to
create a poetic community, and expanding your knowledge of various
poetic forms, techniques, and philosophies.
LTWR 104 - THE NOVELLA
Proposed Instructor: Veronica Gonzalez
In this course we will be critically reading and thoughtfully writing novellas. We will discuss the flexibility and freedom that this length grants us: for it is a length which allows for a deeper development of story and character than a short story, but which nonetheless calls for a coherent and sharp effect. We will workshop your own writing while studying the novellas of Phillip Roth, Roberto Bolaño, Henry James and others. We will read these outside texts with an eye toward craft, reading one work for character development, the next for plot (or the apparent lack of plot), the next for language and other stylistic elements, and discuss how each of these formal motions help in the development of the theme(s) in the work. Finally, we will learn how to apply these ideas to our own writings through discussion and exercises. Our workshop component will be vital in that it will allow you to look at each other's work with a supportive and critical eye. In learning to evaluate and help your peers develop their writing you will find that your own capacity and depth of skill will grow. Prerequisites: LTWR 100; department approval
LTWR 107 - WRITING FOR CHILDREN
Proposed Instructor: Ben Doller
What is it about a good children's book that captivates both child
and adult alike, speeds a child's passage to sleep, dreams, and
imagination, while still allowing the adult reader delight (or at
least sanity) despite repeated visits? In this course we will study
the facts of children's writing: the formal qualities that books for
kids share, and the fundamental qualities of narrative that make one
read on and again. We will also discuss the significance of the
interplay between text and image in illustrated children's books and
the history and influence of fairy tales on modern children's
stories. We will write our own books for children and workshop them
in a supportive environment.
Prerequisites: LTWR 8A; department approval
LTWR 110 - SCREEN WRITING
Instructor: Isaac Artenstein
Adapting Literature to the Screen
Proposed Instructor: Silas Howard
In order to serve the book you often need to change the book, a sometimes-ruthless process. This course will explore the difference of representing consciousness in pictures rather than in words, because the viewer cannot read a character's inner thoughts or intentions as they might on the page, the film must present the same information in a different mode. We will also study and practice the fundamentals of narrative, the art of visual storytelling, and the elements of dramatic writing for the screen. Narrative strategies for establishing structure, pacing, setting, characterization, and dialogue will be provided through model films and writing exercises. Students will adapt a book or short story into to screenplay during this course and work shop scenes in class. Prerequisites: LTWR 8A, 8B, or 8C; department approval.
LTWR 113 - INTERCULTURAL WRITING
Instructor: Cristina Rivera-Garza
This course is an introduction to modes of writing from other cultural systems vastly different from the cultural-aesthetic assumptions of Anglo-American writing. While disclosing the limitations of the English language, this course attempts to provide new language strategies for students. Prerequisites: department approval
LTWR 115 - EXPERIMENTAL WRITING
Instructor: Cristina Rivera-Garza
This workshop explores writing for which the traditional generic distinctions of prose/poetry, fiction/ documentary, narrative/discourse do not apply. Students taking this course will be asked to challenge the boundaries of literature to discover new forms and modes of expression. Prerequisites: department approval.
LTWR 122 - WRITING FOR THE SCIENCES
Instructor: John Granger
This course is designed for the writing major who wants to write about science or nature, and for the science major who wants to write for laypeople, or would like to improve his/her writing skills. Classes alternate from workshops (Thursdays) to lectures and discussions of the readings, and whatever else arises (Tuesdays). Required work and grade breakdown: weekly writing exercises from Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 10th ed. (10%); workshop performance (40%); and a ten-page term project begun second week (50%).Prerequisites: department approval.
LTWR 126 - CREATIVE NON-FICTION WRITING
The Literate Self
Instructor: Linda Brodkey
Designed as a writing workshop, students produce a series of texts (such as working definitions of literacy, writing and reading inventories, memory work, interview questions, biographical sketches and literacy anecdotes) that contribute to their literacy practices. In the final narrative they locate and explore places where they learned to write and read and examine what those sites contribute to how they see themselves as writers and readers. Readings may include educational memoirs, memoirs written by previous students, material on examining the social and cultural dimensions of individual experience, and drafts of materials produced by peers. Writing and/or reading assignments due each week. Prerequisite: LTWR 8C; department approval
LTWR 127 - GENERAL NONFICTION PROSE WORKSHOP
Instructor: Kathryn Shevelow
This is a workshop that focuses on various forms of historical writing intended for a general audience, particularly article-length pieces of the sort you would find in a high-quality general magazine or a specialized one, often written by journalists, popular authors, or academics writing for nonacademic readers. “History” will be defined widely to include research-based genres such as biography, natural history, social history, art history, etc.
Even if your primary interest as a writer is not in nonfiction prose of this sort, but rather other narrative forms such as creative nonfiction, historical fiction, and personal narrative, you might well find this workshop useful. There will be instruction in research techniques that will be relevant to any kind of writing for which you need to gather information in archives or libraries or the internet, focus on how to convey a sense of information to a non-specialist audience in a way that is both intelligible and interesting, and discussion of how to bring past events, people, and places to life. For those who are interested in the professional possibilities of this kind of writing, there will be opportunities to discuss the process by which you identify suitable venues for your work, submit articles, find an agent, etc. We’ll also discuss how to turn a short piece into a book-length project.
The class will be reading examples of various kinds of historical nonfiction, and writing both critiques and exercises. The last several weeks of the quarter will be spent in small workshop groups where you will work on your own project; similar projects will be grouped together as much as possible. The ultimate focus of this class will be for everyone to produce a draft of a substantial piece of historical nonfiction on a suitable topic of your choice. Early in the quarter we’ll discuss in class your ideas for your projects, and offer suggestions and advice for approaching them.Prerequisite: LTWR 8C; department approval
LTWR 144 - TEACHING WRITING
Instructor: Mel Freilicher
This course is designed for students who are interested in teaching literature and writing in high school or college. There are several components: one is your critiquing actual student writing exercises fromLTWR 8a and discussing these in class. The second is concerned with pedagogy theory: mostly about devising more inclusive and relevant curricula and methodologies for teaching writing; some specific issues in composition theory will also be addressed. For a final project, you will create a syllabus for a high school or college literature/writing course of your choice which will include writing exercises, reading and paper assignments, and a discussion of how your classroom practices will assist students in implementing their assignments. A pedagogical rationale will accompany your syllabus: how does it reflect/ critique / modify / expand / contradict some of the theory we‘ve read as well as some which you’ve individually researched. A chief goal of the class is to integrate theory and practice. To that end, in groups, everyone will provide materials and lead a class session on a topic of your choice, and you’ll write a self-evaluation of the session in response to my feedback. Readings include Paulo Freire’s PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, articles by Henry Giroux, Elisabeth Ellsworth, Jane Gallop, Peter Elbow and others. Highly recommended: LTWR 8A andLTWR 8C. Prerequisite: department approval